Share this story

Apple has now confirmed via its Mountain Lion upgrade page that previously published limitations on some 64-bit Macs will extend to the final release. This means that several otherwise 64-bit capable MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros will indeed be restricted from upgrading to OS X 10.8 when it goes public later this month. And according to information found in the recently released golden master (GM), the limitation appears to be related to graphics, as we originally suspected.

When the first developer preview of Mountain Lion was seeded to developers earlier this year, the release notes listed hardware requirements showing that some early 64-bit Mac models were not compatible. (Lion is likewise 64-bit, and can run on any Core2 or newer 64-bit Intel processor.) As such, Mountain Lion developer previews would not run on the earliest Mac Pros, MacBook Pros, iMacs, and other hardware.

Macs supported by Mountain Lion

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)

MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)

MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)

MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)

Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)

Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)

Xserve (Early 2009)

Apple declined to tell us the reasoning behind leaving some of these models out of potential Mountain Lion upgrades, but we suspected it is related to an updated graphics architecture that is designed to improve OS X's graphics subsystem going forward. Our own Andrew Cunningham suspects the issue is more specifically related to graphics drivers, since the GPUs not supported under Mountain Lion have drivers that were written before 64-bit support was common.

Information included with the first Mountain Lion GM now corroborates the connection to 32-bit graphics drivers as the culprit. While Mountain Lion is compatible with any Mac capable of running a 64-bit kernel, the kernel does not support loading 32-bit kernel extensions (KEXTs). Furthermore, Macs with older EFI versions that are not 64-bit clean won't load Mountain Lion's 64-bit only kernel.

As you might have already guessed, graphics drivers are KEXTs under OS X. And the GPUs in some of those early 64-bit Macs were deprecated before 64-bit KEXTs became common. Since those older drivers are 32-bit, Mountain Lion won't load them. We believe Apple decided it was better to draw the line in the sand for some older machines rather than invest the resources into updating the drivers for these older GPUs.

While Apple had suggested that the hardware limitations were not set in stone back in February, it seems anyone hoping for additional support before Mountain Lion is released will be disappointed. Look on the bright side: both Snow Leopard and Lion are likely to get security fixes for at least the next year, so your machine should continue to hum along fine for now. If Mountain Lion contains updates that are useful to you, however, it may be time to start shopping for a newer Mac.

Promoted Comments

So I wonder if they have programmed ML specifically not to run on these machines or if say you have an older Mac Pro that has been upgraded to a supported GPU if it will let you install. I am willing to bet that soon after or likely even before it ships there will be hacks to get it running on unsupported machines. XPostFacto makes a dramatic return

On those older Mac Pros that shipped with unsupported graphics cards, Apple hasn't deigned to update their firmware to support 64-bit EFI. You can run this command in Terminal to see whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit EFI:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

All of the Macs dropped by Mountain Lion are going to return "EFI32" - if you can hack around that in addition to upgrading your graphics card, you may indeed be able to get Mountain Lion running on an older Mac, but it's a bit of a long shot.

351 Reader Comments

"Support" is not the same as "ability to run new software aimed at more capable hardware".

Hardware hasn't changed all that much in a while, really. Even with the new Intel AVX instructions, for example, you can fall back to SSE and just pay by taking a few seconds longer (on long tasks, even... for most uses it would be an imperceptible change to the user). "More capable" just means "a little faster" for most uses for most people. I would imagine that people would be willing to trade a little extra time because their processor/GPU is slower than current rather than paying $1000+ for an upgrade to be able to simply run the latest software.

What is this mythical software that requires Mountain Lion to run? As I said, there are 10 year old Macs that just received a security update a couple months ago. They are still supported, at least at the level of receiving security updates that are deemed critical. They still run all the software they could run when they were new, plus lots of newer stuff. And as for hardware progress - on the GPU side this has been rather huge across the last 5-10 years. The integrated GPUs from 5 years ago were trash.

If you want to complain about something, complain about iCloud requiring Lion. That's an actual real-life issue for some actual real-life people.

Looks like my 2007 iMac lives to go through this mess for one last time next year (or in 2014). Something tells me by then that Microsoft and Apple will be so "Post-PC" by then, the next computer for everyone in the mainstream is going to be a device (tablet) rather than a home PC.

You know the problem with the entire universe resting on tablets now: The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tablet. But don't ask what supports the tablet beneath that. "You're very clever, young man, very clever, but it's tablets all the way down!"

And when that happens, I'll be a proud 35ish-year old luddite still buying desktop computers.

The amount of people defending their own hardware not being updated is quite impressive in this board... I would personally be quite annoyed if my OSes dropped support for my hardware.

hordaktheman wrote:

1232 wrote:

AnObfuscator wrote:

What computers *aren't* throw-away after 5+ years?

My Dell Latitude D620 runs W7 just fine. That's what, 6+ year old?

That's because Win7 has a 32-bit variant. The D620 is not actually a 64-bit compatible laptop.

And Dell doesn't technically support Win7 on the D620 (or D630) for that matter. The reason it works is because of the immense database of available drivers for Win7.

Err... How is that relevant? The point isn't what variants exist, but that they do in fact exist. Windows still supports older hardware, plain and simple. If Apple wanted to, they could easily code up appropriate drivers for older machines, or at least code up a workaround. It's simply a business decision not to.

studentx wrote:

Luck if you get any updates at all...ANDROID, THE DIRTY EVIL ECO-SYSTEM

Neither the quote you replied to nor the article have anything to do with this.

Vista was one of Microsoft greatest blunders, along with the ME and 2000. The service packs really fixed the issues for older hardware support. Win 7 is pretty much a cleaned up vista, and it is a lighter install. Win 8 is pretty much Win 7 with a touch gui and several other mods. Win 8 may go down like Vista. Microsofts best chance is their surface tablet. For all the beta testing, it seems they did not take much user input in.

Phones for the most part are not up to par with PCs. It seems like there is no phone out there that isn't outdated rapidly at the moment. Apple seems to have that end covered for now. I have a LG G2X. I am not happy with it. I think the smart phone market has a long way to go. I am due for an upgrade now. Just waiting for the right phone. Probably wont be a right phone for a few years.

Quote:

My memory is of Windows Vista, where Windows users with nearly new PCs could not meet the system requirements. At the same time, I was installing the latest OS X on Macs that were around 5 years old.

I was going to get upset that my Mac Pro cannot run Mountain Lion, but then I remembered...the machine is almost six years old now, and my MacBook Pro already runs rings around it. I have no problem running Lion on the Mac Pro until it needs to go, which is probably not more than a couple years off.

Both Apple and Microsoft have histories of varying support for the latest OS. Some recent machines make the cut, some don't. Don't forget...if you buy a Windows Phone today, you WILL NOT be able to run the next version of Windows Phone, and a lot of Windows Phone users are furious. And in the meantime I am running the latest iOS on my iPhone 3GS, which is now over 3 years old, and the word is iOS 6 will run on it, even though I'm almost a fool to not get a newer smartphone (of any brand) at that point. Anybody want to explain why Apple refuses to cut off support for it?

More proof that apple is just a throw away computer with an over priced resale price.

They may have a nice case, but the business model is morally wrong.

APPLE, THE DIRTY EVIL COMPANY.

Does your computer magically stop doing all of things you've used it for once Mountain Lion comes out?

It may stop receiving security updates. I'm curious as to why the author believe Snow Leopard will continue to receive security updates once Mountain Lion is released. Historically the current - 2 OS has never received security updates.

Did you miss the comment upthread that remarked on the Leopard security update coming out recently?

Dan Aris

A single one-off security patch does not equate to Apple providing security updates to Leopard.

Not dissing Apple by any chance(I own and iPhone, and an iPad 1 and 2), however the perception I have is that Apple sells toys. Very nice toys certainly, but still a toy. There should be no reason that a computer, whether Apple, Dell, HP, or any other manufacturer, can't be repaired/upgraded easily by the user.

Why not say the same thing about cars?

Because cars are easily repaired by users that know what they are doing?

Lately Macs have been more and more complex to repair/upgrade by people that know what they are doing. The latest Retina Mac being the extreme case of being almost unupgradable by the user.

Is replacing a motor block in a car really easier than replacing a mother board in a recent MacBook Pro? Can you show me a layman replacing the wind screen or gear box or door in their <20 year old car?

The Retina Mac is not meant to be upgradable by the user, which I understand that some people don't like. But as with many things it is what people value and Apple bets that people will value thinness, sleekness and rigidness over the ability as a layman to change the hardware and instead use the warranty to replace faulty parts. The market will judge if Apple succeeds or not.

"Support" is not the same as "ability to run new software aimed at more capable hardware".

Hardware hasn't changed all that much in a while, really. Even with the new Intel AVX instructions, for example, you can fall back to SSE and just pay by taking a few seconds longer (on long tasks, even... for most uses it would be an imperceptible change to the user). "More capable" just means "a little faster" for most uses for most people. I would imagine that people would be willing to trade a little extra time because their processor/GPU is slower than current rather than paying $1000+ for an upgrade to be able to simply run the latest software.

What is this mythical software that requires Mountain Lion to run?

Dunno yet... any software using new APIs/features that aren't also provided for older OSs and where the developers of said software don't provide workarounds (versions or runtime management) to work on older OSs.

Quote:

If you want to complain about something, complain about iCloud requiring Lion. That's an actual real-life issue for some actual real-life people.

Cool, so you provided a real example of software that can't be run on older versions of OSs from the current OS. So you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm pretty positive someone wrote drivers for the 68xx as you say I have no idea what i'm talking about...I do stand a little corrected but for someone who needs to go learn something I think I'm not the one you should be speaking to..• Added additional AMD/ATI Cards:

If you had read what you pasted carefully you'd have seen the words "boot loader" and "graphicsenabler=yes" in it.

That's because the part you pasted is what injects properties for AMD cards in the IO registry so that the kext (which is simply a driver) written by Apple but only guaranteed to work on official Macs is fooled into loading and properly initializing the GPU.

All for HD6870(6850) Size: 4.54 MB

Copy this files in System/Library/Extensions Run Kext Utility Set GraphicEnabler="No" Reboot

Regardless. It is done on windows hardware, there are KEXT and I was orginally going off of my old install of 10.7 which did NOT have support at the time of install.

For the last time, the hackintosh community does not created their own GFX drivers!

In your case, someone probably modified the AMD 6000 controller kext to support your card most likely because normal injection techniques were not working. (maybe because of a weird card layout who knows)

In other words, if Apple does not release a 64 bit GFX driver for these affected chips, there is nothing for the hackintosh community to work with.

P.S The fact it was done on Windows is also irrelevant as it was the manufacturer that provided these drivers.

The Hackintosh community has been making KEXT for a long time now. Something Apple should learn from but refuses to accept. It doesn't cost the community to develop these drivers so what make's anyone think there would be this huge cost to creating them? The loaders and KEXT injectors that have been created work just fine other than not accepting the very latest graphics cards like a ati 68xx and above or nvidia's 5xx & 6xx. OSX is essential a fork of debain or FreeBSD and linux supports nearly everything.

How else could I run OSX 10.7+ off of a custom built i5 system? Oh wait... It doesn't say apple on it anywhere so I must not be able to... guess again people. I'm sure this will be deleted because the media doesn't want the public to know the TRUTH. Your Mac is just a modfied windows PC. Wait till they start using AMD hardware which is in talks now.Oh and ..... this isn't a faked image, it isn't a snapshot from a apple MAC and it isn't running on VMware either..http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v202/ ... tosh-1.jpg

Good luck to Grandma bringing a Hackintosh to an Apple store for support.

The point is: people that build Hackintoshs are not Apple's target audience-- and they never will be. (Don't get me wrong, it's great that you're contributing to Apple's market share, even unofficially.

I wonder how many of the people acting outraged actually have a Mac.I have an affected Mac (a 2007 MacBook) and I just don't see how this is a big deal.Does it mean that I will probably want a new Mac in these next 2 years? Yes, but than again, I probably would have anyway: 2007 was a while ago.

Apple: Planned obsolescence a bit earlier than strictly necessary, advertising Macs as being the answer to malware when strictly speaking, they can get infected (just not by as many nasties as Windows, by a long shot), selling hardware with a juicy margin rather than shaving margins to the bone like every other hardware vendor out there

Microsoft: Strongarming OEMs into paying for Windows licenses for every computer sold, using monopoly power to push competitors out of several markets, breaking laws in the US and EU, deliberately obfuscating communications protocols and file formats to make it hard to interoperate even after being ordered to make those protocols and formats public and clear for interoperability purposes...and all that's just the highlights.

All for-profit corporations are legally obligated to make money for their shareholders; no more, no less. If they do good things, it's because it will either make them more money or not cause them to lose any significant amount while improving their public image.

Apple, in the past several years, has been going out of there way to increase and maintain profits through a lot of IP lawsuits, and since they are one of the largest companies they get a lot of attention for it. Microsoft has been doing what they do for so long that it's just accepted and doesn't really generate as much of a buzz as when Apple does it. Microsoft did and does do everything that Apple does, but the company isn't the top-dog anymore. Sure, a vast majority of the world uses their software, but that was news 10 years ago.

Apple makes people talk. Every single Apple post on any blog or news site generates attention and causes people to argue about which OS is better and keeps people on the site. It's a safe assumption that there are just as many, if not more, "passionate" Apple-haters than there are "fanboys".

Finally, to go with everyone else's anecdotal evidence, I have a 10 year old Mac running Leopard and I use it everyday. Everything I need works fine.

Apple's going through a transition to phase out hardware. I have another machine that is being affected by this, and it does suck. Everyone here seems to forget that Ars doesn't make up your average computer user. Your average student, your average grandparent, those who don't know about such things and typically don't care. The same people who purchased a "Windows Vista Capable" machine that could only run a stripped down, feature-disabled version of Home Basic. The same people who have an Android device running 2.x that they bought last year, or won't be able to upgrade to iOS 6. The same people who buy a new computer every two or three years because they can get a PC for so cheap.

Just because you may have spent more for your Mac doesn't entitle you to compatibility for... any amount of time. But what you do will still work. AutoDESK, Adobe, Microsoft and whoever aren't going to suddenly stop working because of this.

If Mountain Lion contains updates that are useful to you, however, it may be time to start shopping for a newer Mac.

Two times in the last couple of days I have seen that in Ars. What is the obsession with replacing 3 year old machines?

Also, while a lot of people laugh at MS "XP security" at least they give security updates for their systems for more than 4 years.

Bubby wrote:

You can't install the latest and greatest OS on it so it's garbage?

Ridiculous. It will work well and run fine until the hardware dies with it's current OS. I have a quake server sitting here that still runs Win2K.

Except that next year might stop getting security updates for your system. And this are the Macs that sold 10s of millions, so this is going to be attractive to hackers.

Loepard, more than 6 years on now, still gets updates. It is an N-2 OS release, same as XP, MS is just dragging their feet longer between evrsions. If it wasn;t for governments passing laws MAKING Microsoft keep XP up to date being only N-2, they would not be.

The only "security update" (if it can even be called that) I am aware of was made available to remove Flashback and disable outdated copies of Adobe's Flash Player. Other than that I'm not aware of any security updates having been made available for Leopard after the release of Lion.

Looks like my 2007 iMac lives to go through this mess for one last time next year (or in 2014). Something tells me by then that Microsoft and Apple will be so "Post-PC" by then, the next computer for everyone in the mainstream is going to be a device (tablet) rather than a home PC.

You know the problem with the entire universe resting on tablets now: The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tablet. But don't ask what supports the tablet beneath that. "You're very clever, young man, very clever, but it's tablets all the way down!"

And when that happens, I'll be a proud 35ish-year old luddite still buying desktop computers.

I feel you, I love my desktop computer (an iMac as well) and would never settle for an iPad, I really need the power of the large display and a bunch of peripherals and the terminal, and the… Though I can't remember every using the optical bay, ever.

But on the bright side, tablets are not even a maturing technology, within a few years the IxD will begin to form more thorough set of "rules" and the general computing power of tablets will have grown quite a lot, and people have become more accustomed to them.

A single one-off security patch does not equate to Apple providing security updates to Leopard.

Well, it certainly puts paid to the notion that "the current - 2 OS has never received security updates."

Dan Aris

No, it does not. It was an exception that Apple was eventually forced to provide under user pressure. Likewise it wasn't made available to G5 based systems. Please stop using a one of exception as if it's the norm. It is well known Apple provides security updates to current and current - 1 versions. Anything else is at their whim (hell, even their current policy is at their whim).

This sounds like early-adopters (of 64-bit macs) are getting punished. They shell out the money to support Apple's transition to 64-bit, then their perfectly good comp is going to get left behind on OS updates due to transitional issues.

The people who would legitimately have a gripe are professionals in the case of Mac Pros, and their need to keep current with the latest software. But then, if you're in that need of high performance hardware, you're probably not running a 2006 Mac Pro now anyway. That's what I have at work, and though I'll probably end up getting a MacBook Pro with Retina display next year to replace my old Mac Pro, I may just wait for the next big update to Mac Pros coming next year and upgrade to that.

It may be slow for me now wrangling my Nikon D800 36 megapixel images in an old Mac Pro, but for most of the time, it's plenty fast. And will work fine with Lion. No doubt our IT department will insist we wait until next year to upgrade to Mountain Lion anyway, since they've been taking more than a year now to upgrade from Windows Server 2003 to 2008.

Apple has made it pretty clear that it is going to be doing annual (at least) updates to both iOS and OS X. In addition, it is locking up its hardware, as evidenced by the recent pullout from EPEAT.

Now, Apple knows what demands it's software upgrades, for several generations, are going to be placing on hardware. It is therefore incumbent on Apple to design and overbuild its locked hardware such that it is capable of handling the software it will be placing on the market. And it should do so for a pre-determined and publicly guaranteed period of time. Otherwise, what's the point of long-lasting hardware that by-design has only short-term software compatibility?

That would be "fragmentation by design", otherwise known as "throwing away your competitive advantage", at least with regard to the Android market.

And on the battlefront with Windows, it would be handing the competition a clear advantage to be exploited, which is not smart business.

So if Apple really wants to lock down hardware, it has to significantly overbuild it. That would be a departure from its pattern of fine-tuning the hardware/OS mix to stay ahead on performance despite a sometimes deficit in hardware specs.

Apple, in the past several years, has been going out of there way to increase and maintain profits through a lot of IP lawsuits, and since they are one of the largest companies they get a lot of attention for it.

Are you really sure about that? It seems to me that Apple never wants licensing money (aka making money through IP lawsuits). To me it seems Apple is fighting an aggressive (almost personal) turf war rather than anything else. I base this perception on the impression that Apple keeps seeking bans rather than any licensing money. Microsoft on the other hand seems to aim for profits by looking to squeeze licensing money from their patent litigation.

The amount of people defending their own hardware not being updated is quite impressive in this board... I would personally be quite annoyed if my OSes dropped support for my hardware.

hordaktheman wrote:

1232 wrote:

AnObfuscator wrote:

What computers *aren't* throw-away after 5+ years?

My Dell Latitude D620 runs W7 just fine. That's what, 6+ year old?

That's because Win7 has a 32-bit variant. The D620 is not actually a 64-bit compatible laptop.

And Dell doesn't technically support Win7 on the D620 (or D630) for that matter. The reason it works is because of the immense database of available drivers for Win7.

Err... How is that relevant? The point isn't what variants exist, but that they do in fact exist. Windows still supports older hardware, plain and simple. If Apple wanted to, they could easily code up appropriate drivers for older machines, or at least code up a workaround. It's simply a business decision not to.

It's relevant in the fact that Apple has abandoned 32-bit computing while Microsoft hasn't. And some people are happy about this push for 64-bit computing while others aren't. There were many people in tech circles lamenting the fact that Win7 and now Win8 still ship 32-bit versions because they want to see a greater push to native 64-bit applications.

Microsoft's dedication to legacy software and hardware certainly exists for a good purpose but there's no denying that it severely holds progress back. Just consider how every single PC game is designed around the 32-bit limitation. Windows having 32-bit versions is great for those on older hardware but it is a handicap for those who've moved on.

That Apple is willing forego legacy support isn't good or bad. But the fact that some of us can appreciate it has nothing to do with making excuses for them.

1) They were the first to embrace USB, doing away with floppy disks, serial, and parallel ports with the introduction of the iMac. People saw this as foolish, but Apple was vindicated.

The ports they did away with were ADB and SCSI. Macs hadn't, IIRC, had serial ports for years, nor ever had parallel ports.

Serial and parallel ports on PCs did die because of this, but Apple didn't kill them directly.

(Also, I'm not sure exactly when the Apple printer port/Localtalk port died. It was probably replaced by the Ethernet port earlier in the '90s, but it may have met its timely end at this point, too.)

The "Apple printer port/Localtalk port" was in fact a serial port, and the iMac was the beginning of the end for serial ports on Macs, though I know several models at that time still had serial ports.Maybe it was gone by about 2000-2001?

It's true that Macs never had a Centronics parallel port—SCSI was used for anything that required more performance than a serial port could provide.

Correct. The ADB port btw was the keyboard/mouse port initially by design, actially invented by the Woz himself. It was later adapted for printers as well, and was daisy chainable and addressible from day 1. Macs had a seperate printer port which was an 8 or 9 pin round serial port (RS-232 compatible), the ADB port was not used for printing and was a 4 pin connector. This port was also used for modems.

That happens in the Windows world on occasion. I could never upgrade my 2005 Gateway 8510GZ to Windows 7 because ATI required laptop manufacturers to release drivers for their older mobile chips instead of doing it themselves, and Gateway never released a Vista/Win7 driver for that particular GPU. I tried installing a generic Catalyst driver instead, but had no luck, so I was stuck with XP if I wanted any sort of real GPU support at all.

It's not Windows world, it's OEM world. It's not Microsoft's fault that some OEM or 3rd party hw manufacturer wouldn't update their GPU drivers. You can always install Windows with generic graphic drivers, so it's not the same as if you couldn't install the OS AT ALL.

More proof that apple is just a throw away computer with an over priced resale price.

They may have a nice case, but the business model is morally wrong.

APPLE, THE DIRTY EVIL COMPANY.

Well if thats what you believe what would you call Microsoft and Nokia? They are currently selling products that are not upgradable. Like the Lumia 900. You can go into a store and buy that today and when Windows Phone 8 ships later this year, you won't be able to upgrade it.

Funny thing the Lumia 900 will get many of the features of Windows Phone 8 with the update to Windows 7.8 starting with the START screen. New Windows Phone 8 hardware based features like NFC, dual core and high DPI screens can't be bolted on the Lumia.

Those overpriced and obsolete Macs will get none (zero, nada, zilch) of the features of Mountain Lion (Not even Facebook integration -hahahaha-).Which hardware based restriction is stopping Apple for allowing updates to these Macs?

Maybe where you live, but around here, 480 to 600 seems to be the norm from apple stores. Don't know why. Like I said, I fix Pc's, laptops, smart phones, and tablets for a living. I run 3 successful shops. I don't charge a flat rate. I bill based on what the job is. A hinge replacement is about $79 including the parts. Logic Board is usually about 189 and 79 for the labor.

Where do you live? Just took my wife's 5 year old macbook pro to the apple store in fort lauderdale last month because it was acting funky and I didn't feel like messing with it. They replaced the battery, replaced the trackpad, and upgraded the OS to snow leopard (she was still on leopard). Total cost to us, $88.

Personally I'm still running my q9550 with 8 gigs of ram, and rocking the windows xp x64 edition, but my wife is all apple. I've had to take in her old g4 powerbook, her imac, and her macbook pro for out of warranty repairs at various times, and it's always been reasonable. Sometime less than what I would charge to troubleshoot a windows pc, honestly, so the prices your local apple store is charging seem way out of line.

It doesn't matter where he lives because he is either ignorant of Apple's actual repair costs or outright misrepresenting them in order to make his own repair service look better by comparison. I honestly don't know if Apple's OOW flat rate repair costs have gone up recently but it used to be that, depending on model of machine, a flat rate repair from Apple costs somewhere between $200 and $400. Certain serviceable parts would be cheaper, like HDD and RAM. Internal batteries are usually $99. But the flat rate repair option would cover ANYTHING that would have been covered in warranty and covered parts and labor. If your logic board died and took out the LCD inverter board along with it, you'd get the system repaired for an average price of $300.

Now, the only repairs from Apple that would be quoted at $600 or more would be things they don't cover in their warranty, like spills and drops. This guy is likely seeing only the people with those types of issues coming into his shop because most people that go into the Apple store and have an issue that's covered under their flat rate repair service are likely to go that route instead of an equivalent repair by a non-authorized 3rd party repair shop.

Apple's long-standing OOW flat rate repairs are actually a benefit that many Apple customers are not even aware of and Apple typically provides repairs for at least five years from when the affected model is discontinued; beyond five years, it's determined by when they run out of repair parts.

With Apple's new change to yearly OS releases (like iOS for their iThings) but continuing to support only the 2 most recent OS's for security updates means that your Mac Pro has about a year of new security updates left before it won't get them for an Apple OS. I'm guessing Apple hasn't thought this out, although maybe they have.

To put this into perspective, Windows 7 (which you can install on that very capable Mac Pro) will provide security updates through 2020 - Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which came out at about the same time as Windows 7, will have its security update support end at the end of this month when Mountain Lion is released.

If Apple continued to offer security updates for their OS's for the same amount of time as before it would lessen the gun to the head nature of dropping a piece of hardware from ongoing OS updates.

Apple, in the past several years, has been going out of there way to increase and maintain profits through a lot of IP lawsuits, and since they are one of the largest companies they get a lot of attention for it.

Are you really sure about that? It seems to me that Apple never wants licensing money (aka making money through IP lawsuits). To me it seems Apple is fighting an aggressive (almost personal) turf war rather than anything else. I base this perception on the impression that Apple keeps seeking bans rather than any licensing money. Microsoft on the other hand seems to aim for profits by looking to squeeze licensing money from their patent litigation.

Counterpoint, see Apple MFi program. Specifically TO licence their technology to vendors and partners. Apple only sues over what's not licenceable by them at all (almost exclusively trademarked, not patented tech) or over patents they do licence but someone did not. Every patent apple lobbed in an offensive suit was one licenced by at least one other company appls was also suing. Many patents apple used defensively (countersuit) were unlicenced patents, but all their aggressive assaults were based on patents that were in fact licenced out to others in the same industry.

With Apple's new change to yearly OS releases (like iOS for their iThings) but continuing to support only the 2 most recent OS's for security updates that means that your Mac Pro has about a year of new security updates left before it won't get them for an Apple OS. I'm guessing Apple hasn't thought this out, although maybe they have.

To put this into perspective, Windows 7 (which you can install on that very capable Mac Pro) will provide security updates through 2020 - Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which came out at about the same time as Windows 7, will have its security update support end at the end of this month when Mountain Lion is released.

If Apple continued to offer security updates for their OS's for the same amount of time as before it would lessen the gun to the head nature of dropping a piece of hardware from ongoing OS updates.

The OS release cycle is NOT yearly. (except for iOS). Aside from the exception with 10.1, OS releases from apple have fairly consistantly followed 18-24 month cycles. 10.8 will be the one exception being only 12 months, but is necessary due to iCloud/mobile.me intregration changes, as well as being a foundation for upcoming work with iLife 12 and notably iTunes pending major overhaul. 10.8 is mostly a feature release, very little under the hood changes, but there is a graphic change that is negatively effecting some of the rare few 32bit GPUs shipped in 64bit intel macs.

This sounds like early-adopters (of 64-bit macs) are getting punished. They shell out the money to support Apple's transition to 64-bit, then their perfectly good comp is going to get left behind on OS updates due to transitional issues.

Exactly like what happened with the early Intel Mac adopters, who got this particular shaft with Lion last year. The difference this time is that the reason is slightly harder to understand, and that in particular rather new Mac Pros are included. If I had one of those, I'd be pissed. If I had a late mini that was not supported, I'd shrug.

I think this article distorts the situation by saying that the graphics drivers are the entire reason. The lack of 64-bit capable EFI is the true stumbling block to fixing it yourself (that hack upthread is a guy copying files from Lion to make Mountain Lion keep booting on 32-bit EFI). Making new EFI versions after the fact might be too much work (and testing), but I actually think they could have supported the 32-bit kernel one version longer. It may however be that they wanted to raise the minimum GPU required, realized that this eliminated all non 64-bit EFI machine except a small number of Mac Pros, and decided that that was not enough to bother with. Sucks for MP users to be sure, but I can't say I'm surprised.

I don't understand what's the big deal to just let 32-bit continue working. These machines are older anyway so unlikely these are the performance chasers? How much work is it to just continue to support.

It's annoying I have a Core 2 Duo Macbook that works fine for what it does, yet now it's been forced out of business. I know I don't have to upgrade and it will keep working, however I do like to have security updates and it's been said several times above that Apple doesn't provide security updates for more than a year or so after a new OS X release

They will continue working under the supported platform.

"Just to continue support" means that apple need to write shims and test them for the old 32 bit only hardware in their new OS. This may incur security problems, performance problems, additional work to develop, test and bugfix. It may prevent apple from being able to streamline code and make it more reliable and maintainable.

The machines are all out of warranty and currently work with the previous, still supported OS.

The amount of people defending their own hardware not being updated is quite impressive in this board... I would personally be quite annoyed if my OSes dropped support for my hardware.

To me it's a bit of both worlds. When my then-main desktop computer, an purchased in january 2006 Core Duo iMac, didn't make it to the next major version of OS X (exactly one year ago) I was a bit annoyed but at the same time it was acceptable enough that I didn't really complain because Snow Leopard worked well at that time and I knew I would have support for at least another year. Besides, I figured that after another year the iMac would be well over six years old and I would need a much faster computer anyway.

I am considering re-purposing the old 17'' iMac as a media centre, I'll just have to find the time. Though I suspect I'll just buy a Raspberry PI or an Apple TV instead. With age comes laziness

From a business point of view:"- Who wants to buy a machine without knowing how long it will be supported?"

We know how long it will be supported. Apple always did that. Also, the support

"- Who wants to run a business without knowing when to buy new hardware?"

you know what ? it's the same with routers and switches : you don't know when "suddenly" cisco/3com/hp change everything and you miss the much more improved models. Sometimes they explain future changes, sometimes NOT.

Not every companies are like intel with extensive "roadmaps".

"Buy a Windows OS and you've **guaranteed** support for at least 10 years"

5 years, and the "extended" 5 years. it's for enterprises.

As redhat enterprise, for servers you have 10 years straight.

the truth is Apple is not interested in the specific enterprise market.

"It's not as fancy, I know, but planning and continuity mean something to a lot of business owners."

everyone knows that.

what is your point ? Apple doesn't sell the same products than HP or Dell. You have to accept that.

Still, when you want a Final Cut workstation or an efficient tabl..ipad for your home, it's an Apple.

-"support" doesn't mean you can install the latest software or stuff, even in the pc world.

Apple, in the past several years, has been going out of there way to increase and maintain profits through a lot of IP lawsuits, and since they are one of the largest companies they get a lot of attention for it.

Are you really sure about that? It seems to me that Apple never wants licensing money (aka making money through IP lawsuits). To me it seems Apple is fighting an aggressive (almost personal) turf war rather than anything else. I base this perception on the impression that Apple keeps seeking bans rather than any licensing money. Microsoft on the other hand seems to aim for profits by looking to squeeze licensing money from their patent litigation.

Counterpoint, see Apple MFi program. Specifically TO licence their technology to vendors and partners. Apple only sues over what's not licenceable by them at all (almost exclusively trademarked, not patented tech) or over patents they do licence but someone did not. Every patent apple lobbed in an offensive suit was one licenced by at least one other company appls was also suing. Many patents apple used defensively (countersuit) were unlicenced patents, but all their aggressive assaults were based on patents that were in fact licenced out to others in the same industry.

I am talking about the context of ongoing patent litigation, not about general interoperability/certification programmes. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

Neither Apple v. HTC, nor Apple v. Samsung nor Apple v. Psystar are about getting licensing money. Do you have any examples of patent lawsuits where Apple are trying to get licensing money? Which were licensing the patents you are talking about?

I'm so tired of being screwed by these tech companies! My PDP-11 hasn't had a decent OS upgrade in years!

Seriously, maybe it's just because it's Apple and some people get their kicks by complaining about anything Apple, but reading these comments reminds me of why the rest of the population thinks geeks/IT/computer people are nerdy losers. Talk about making a mountain (lion! ha!) out of a mole hill! Your old Mac will still work fine when ML is released. You don't have to buy anything new if you don't want to. You just won't get newest OS. You were however able to upgrade to Snow Leopard and Lion.

Moving totally 64bit is great. Losing support for ML, if you have one of those few machines that won't be able to upgrade, I can understand you being disappointed - but you are the tiny minority. Most people never upgrade their OS. Others are upgrading to a new machine every couple years. And a large number of buyers are first time Mac buyers. There isn't a strong case for supporting 32bit - it's an older tech that's fading away, Apple had to cut support at some point.

And comparisons to Windows? Vista made a huge line in the sand. It killed off tons of hardware and affected many more users than ML. So those of you with the 7 year old PCs that "work great" on Vista/7 either bought a monster PC 7 years ago or did upgrades in the past few years. And either way, that puts you in the minority again. Most buyers buy an average PC that won't run an OS seven years later at a decent speed. And most users won't upgrade their hardware.